HB 

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Book ^j^l A^j^frt- 




To Whom Much Is Given 






BY 

K^t<i LUCIA AMES MEAD 

AUTHOR OF 

« Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers^^ and " Memoirs of a 
Millionaire " 



New York : 46 East Fourteenth Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
Boston : 100 Purchase Street 



a^m 1. 






Copyright, 1899, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & CompanYo 



By Transfer 

D. C. Public Library 

AUG 17 t934 



TRAHSfKKHED FROM PUBLIC LIBRARY 




Contents. 



Luxury . 

The Privileged Woman 



PAGB 

7 
26 



The following pages contain the substance of- a number of 
simple, practical talks that have been given to small audi- 
ences of women in Boston and vicinity. A few passages are 
incorporated that are taken from scattered articles which 
have appeared in papers and magazines. 

In putting these words on paper the writer has had in 
mind the thoughtful and womanly club-woman of America, 
who is herself one of the most interesting products of an age, 
that here, and for the first time in history, has made pos- 
sible the highest achievement of which woman is capable. 

L. A. M. 



TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 



LUXURY. 



One hundred years ago Malthus proclaimed a doctrine 
very comforting indeed to Dives. Emerson in commenting 
on this, speaks of the ' ' brutal political economy ' ' of the 
time, and elsewhere declares that ^' Malthus is the right or- 
gan of the English proprietors." Nothing could be more 
acceptable to Dives than the belief that with a clear con- 
science he could v/ash his hands of all responsibility for the 
woes of Lazarus, and see in pestilence, famine and poverty 
a wise, providential arrangement for the suppression of sur- 
plus population. 

The blasphemous attribution to the Deity of results due 
to man's ignorance, folly and sin is not so popular as it once 
was; our political economy is less brutal. But man is 
ever ready to find excuses for self-indulgence. Since the 
comforting Malthusian doctrine perhaps there has been 
none more widely spread and honestly believed than that 
expressed in the advice to the rich, uttered by many hon- 
orable men; *' Do not economize; buy more than ever; 
everything you buy will give employment to some one and 
thus be doing God service." Robert Ingersoll is quoted as 
urging extravagance; a leading promoter of the Christian 
Endeavor movement is quoted as saying of a ball which be- 
came world-famous for its costliness: **1 don't know how 

7 



8 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

much it will cost, but whatever sum it is, I wish it might be 
ten times as much." 

Considerable careful inquiry has shown that the working 
people, quite as often as the rich, approve of lavish outlay. 
Probably two-thirds of the people in the nation approve or 
condone the expenditure of several millions on a certain 
palace in a southern state which, it is said, requires the con- 
stant attendance of seventy servants. Probably millions of 
our people would like to own a similar one and, if they 
could, would like to spend twenty-five thousand dollars a 
year on their wardrobe as a certain New York society woman 
boasts of doing. 

Col. T. W. Higginson relates that when he was a boy 
there was only one millionaire in the state of Massachusetts, 
and he and his mates used to wonder how it was possible 
for any one man to own such an incredible sum. What 
could he do with so much? The thought of it filled them 
with awe. 

Now we see men who count their millions by the score 
and whose annual income is enough to endow a university. 
Expensive living is the order of the day and has become, as 
a Boston writer well puts it, '' the blight on America." 

Before examining the question of the ethics and economics 
of luxury, the word must be defined as it will here be used. 
Luxury is anything made to promote pleasure which at 
any given time is expensive and exceptional. 

A Stradivarius violin owned and used by a professional 
violinist, though it be very *' expensive" and *' exceptional " 
would of course not come under this head ; it would be the 
artist's means of livelihood. In classifying different objects 
as luxuries or non-luxuries we must always consider ''a 
given time." It is needless to say that what is a luxury in 
one decade is a necessity in another. In Queen Ehzabeth's 



LUXURY, 9 

day stockings were luxuries ; so, in Washington's time were 
oranges, and in Lincoln's time large photographs. 

The terms ''expensive" and ''exceptional" are relative 
terms. A piano that, estimated by a blacksmith's income, 
might be expensive, and judged by his neighbor's posses- 
sions might be exceptional, would be neither exceptional nor 
expensive for a prosperous city physician. 

Having defined the use of the word "luxury," let us ask 
ourselves the highly important and pertinent question, "Is it 
justifiable ? " If it promotes efficiency or is not used exclu- 
sively, yes ; if it does not promote efficiency, using the word 
in its broadest sense, or is enjoyed only by the few, prob- 
ably no. This answer may be given with promptness and 
positiveness by all who recognize the Christian code of 
morals as a criterion for ethical conduct. Whatever does 
not serve to make life broader, richer, more capable, and 
nobly happy, whatever serves only for ostentation and un- 
democratic display, or over-indulgence of appetite, must be 
condemned not only by sound ethics but by sound econom- 
ics and politics. 

The question whether one has not " a perfect right to do 
as he pleases with his own money ' ' must be answered as 
follows: "Yes, if you mean a legal right; so has one a 
legal right to spend his life aimlessly and selfishly ; the Prod- 
igal Son kept within his legal rights and was not arrested. 
Judged by the standard of the jail, you have a perfect right 
to squander money until you commit crime. But no man 
has a moral right to do many things for which the statute 
decrees no penalty. No one has a moral right to spend 
money, which represents human toil, .for that which profiteth 
nothing, or profiteth less than it ought. 

While it is impossible to state precisely in dollars and 
cents the exact limit of expenditure that promotes efficiency, 



10 rO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

this may be said. Books, pictures, music, leisure and 
travel, if rightly used, ennoble life and make it more efficient. 
These things of intrinsic value are not the most costly. It 
is safe to say that the greater part of the important intellec- 
tual work of our clay has been done by men who had most 
of their lives not more than three thousand dollars a year 
of income. Emerson managed to get the best things in life 
on less than that. One may imagine a bank president or 
railroad magnate with a large family to educate, with many 
guests to entertain and with high city rents or taxes to pay, 
expending profitably possibly ten times this amount. But 
with the present scale of prices, with the essentials and com- 
forts of life becoming daily cheaper, it is not conceivable 
that further private expenditure can make life more virile or 
better worth living. It will rather tend to make it flabby in 
moral fiber and low in intellectual tone. "I have never," 
said William Morris, *'been in a rich man's house which 
would not have looked the better for having a bonfire made 
outside of it of nine-tenths of all that it held. Luxury 
cannot exist without slavery of some kind or other. It 
must be confessed that the middle classes of our civilization 
have embraced luxury rather than art." Here, this noted 
artist uses the word "luxury" as meaning what exists for 
mere ostentation ; he indulges a trifle in hyperbole, but his 
words deserve profound consideration. The form of 
beauty that is most often admired is that which tends, if 
one indulges much in it, to enervate and not to elevate the 
man. It is the beauty of the type most prized in eastern 
harems — the beauty of pearls and gold and flashing gems, 
of silks and marbles and all glittering, gorgeous things. 
This beauty has its place in the world and has indeed great 
charm. But it is chiefly admired by the type of vacant 
mind that is not trained to see the subtler beauties of fine 



LUXURY. 11 

proportions and perfect harmonies in less showy and costly 
substances. This beauty however has great fascination for 
highly trained minds as well ; it may properly be indulged 
in moderately, or even extensively, when not enjoyed 
merely by the few, and when the chief enjoyment is not due 
to a lurking pleasure in the fact that these bits of beauty are 
so rare that common folk cannot possess them. 

When a woman enjoys the sparkle of a diamond just as 
she does the sparkle of a dewdrop, and would as lief as not 
have diamonds so common that her cook could wear them, 
the joy in them is surely genuine and innocent. We do not 
like sunshine nor smiles nor flowers nor great poems nor 
music less, because they are within the reach of all. 

Precious marbles, costly leather hangings and ceilings of 
gold mosaic and all the splendor and magnificence of a 
mediaeval prince may be justified when put into the palace of 
the people — the Library or Town Hall ; but, when housed 
in the home of the millionaire and enjoyed by very few, 
they carry danger with them. Envy, servility, the worship 
of things, the rousing of false ambitions and wicked emula- 
tions have plainly followed the gross self-indulgence in im- 
perial splendor which some of the rapidly accumulated for- 
tunes of the last three decades have permitted. In the 
home of American citizens imperial splendor is a menace to 
democracy and to sentiments that alone make the perpetuity 
of our institutions possible. 

Lowell was once asked by M. Guizot how long he sup- 
posed our republic would endure — a natural question from a 
Frenchman who had seen republics come and go. The 
reply of our patriot-poet was noteworthy and ominous : 
** So long as the principles of its founders remain dominant." 
We do well to ask whether the principles that dominate our 
land to-day are those that were enunciated in Independence 



12 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

Hall and on the Mayflower. It is not the magnificence of 
the few that is cause for chief concern, but the ideals of hap- 
piness that they set up which the millions accept. 

It is often protested that one thousand dollars is no more 
for one man to expend in proportion to his income than one 
hundred dollars is for another, and this argument is offered 
as an excuse for the former to spend ten times as much on 
himself as the latter. But, if '* efficiency " is to be the test, 
it is evident that we must revise our ideas of extravagance 
in expenditure. Extravagance means an outlay morally un- 
warranted by existing circumstances, and does not depend on 
the relation of outlay to income. A man with an income of 
five hundred dollars may very properly go into heavy debt 
to get medical attendance for his child, while a millionaire 
may not without extravagance pay a dollar for a cigar. The 
ancient practice of giving tithes has been perpetuated by 
some in our own day. As their wealth increases they give 
away one-tenth, as was their wont when they had less. 
Such persons fail to see that a man's capacity for enjoyment 
does not keep pace with his increase of wealth, and that, as 
one grows richer, the proportion of his income that he may 
rightly keep decreases. 

An artisan who has a thousand dollars income might 
be unwise to give away one-tenth ; he might deprive his 
family of necessities. One who has an income of a hundred 
thousand dollars might with one-tenth of that promote his 
efficiency to the utmost, and be called upon to give not one- 
tenth, but nine-tenths, to other ends. This does not neces- 
sarily mean giving it away in charity. 

The rich man may dine on larks' tongues served on gold 
plate, but he is no happier nor more efficient than if he ate 
roast-beef from china. He may drink costly wines of ex- 
quisite bouquet, but his bread and butter, milk and vegeta- 



LUXURY. 13 

bles and meats are little better and no more nourishing than 
what he would buy if he had only moderate means. He 
ordinarily dresses not much better than his head clerk. 
He can sleep no more hours than the laborer, though he 
lie under costly lace canopies. He may own more books, 
but he can read no more than one who has access to a fine 
public library. He may travel in a private car, but he can 
go no further nor see more than one who takes the ordinary 
conveyance. In all the essentials of life he has little ad- 
vantage over the man of moderate means. His capacity for 
enjoyment gained by increased expenditure is limited. 
Superabundance brings satiety, not keener joy. 

The gulf fixed between the man who has only a bare room 
and bread and beer on an income of three hundred dollars 
and the professional man who earns ten times that sum is 
great. The latter with his three thousand can command 
bathroom and parlor, three courses at his dinner, good 
society, music, books and travel. He is far nearer to the 
man who has a three-hundred-thousand dollar income than 
to him of the three hundred. The two are practically 
equals in opportunity for enjoyment and fullness of life. 
The arithmetical ratio between the incomes of the three 
bears no relation to what they each get out of life. 

Twenty thousand dollars' worth of flowers cannot give any 
human being twenty times as much pleasure as one thou- 
sand dollars' worth. A wardrobe of fifty gowns is not worth 
to its owner ten times as much as one of five gowns. The 
child who has seventy-five toys has little, if any, more pleas- 
ure than he who has seven. Human nature is so made that 
its pleasures cannot expand or contract in mathematical pro- 
portion to one's bank account. This obvious and elemen- 
tary fact seems to have escaped many observers, who, in 
consequence, have conceived of extravagance as simply an 



14 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

expenditure exceeding income. Any luxury that falls short 
of that they have deemed justifiable. Extravagance and 
economy are not determined by large or small expendi- 
ture. If we constantly use " efficiency " as the touch-stone, 
large outlay for pleasure may often be most admirable. 
Great private grounds whose green turf and stately elms 
give beauty and dignity to some dreary factory town, 
and which, being seen by all men, are not exclusively 
enjoyed, are an instance of good expenditure only one 
degree less admirable than giving to the town a public 
park. 

Domestic architecture that is beautiful in the harmony of 
true proportions and is encrusted with quaint carvings that 
delight and rest the eyes of passers-by is another instance 
of a wise use of money. That type of beauty which all may 
see is not only a joy forever, but is forever an inspiration to 
a whole community toward nobler thought and less com- 
monplace life. The difference in aesthetic and educational 
value between ten thousand dollars' worth of perishable silk 
hangings in the interior of a mansion to be seen by few, and 
a ten-thousand-dollar fountain or greensward visible to 
every one, is the difference between money expended so as to 
produce an inadequate result on the one hand and an ade- 
quate result on the other. 

We need often to be reminded very sternly of the truism 
that money spent in one way cannot be spent in another and 
that therefore the expenditure of only ten cents is a matter 
for consideration. That sum may buy a Police Gazette or a 
fragrant flower ; a glass of whiskey or a loaf of bread ; a 
cigar or a trip to the park. Extravagance is not confined to 
the rich ; it is the sin of the shop girl and grocer's boy as well. 
But it becomes most appalling and startling when seen in 
the purchase of that excess of possessions which, as has been 



LUXURY. 15 

shown, simply satiate the appetite and finally pall on the 
possessor. 

The cruelty of this selfish expenditure is largely due to 
lack of imagination and a little due to a false economic 
theory. The child indulged in a superfluity of amusements 
has little training in imagination and inventiveness. Some 
of his faculties are thus stunted and remain undeveloped in 
mature years. Self-indulgence is not provocative of sym- 
pathy, of putting ourself in another's place, of counting 
nothing human foreign to us. It requires imagination and 
some fine degree of spiritual perception for a man to weigh 
ethical questions and to balance expenditures — to say : 
"This yacht will cost me ten thousand dollars a month to 
run ; with that sum I can have a luxurious floating palace 
for myself and friends, or, on the other hand, I can educate 
at Tuskegee or Hampton in one year a thousand colored 
boys and girls who now are growing up in filth and igno- 
rance, a menace to the country. I could set one thousand 
lives in a different direction and help them to be self-helpful. 
This is one alternative ; which shall I choose ? If I do the 
one thing, I cannot do the other with that same money." 

Here is a dowager who puts a fortune, which some one 
else has earned for her, into a tiara. Occasionally she wears 
it, well guarded by detectives. She has no imagination to 
make real to her the lives of tired shop girls who stand at 
bargain counters ten hours a day, with throbbing temples, 
and long in vain for a few quiet days among the hills and 
brooks. The price of her rich bauble, which she sees only 
now and then when it comes from the deposit vaults, might, if 
she chose, give her the joy of the gratitude of five thousand 
radiant girls. Does it not seem, not to be too severe, at 
least a little crude to care more for these glittering stones 
than for the girls ? 



16 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

You say, perhaps: ''If she sold that tiara, some one 
would buy it. If we have diamonds, some one must wear 
them. Shall no one have jewels ? Where do you draw the 
line ? " To which it may be said that diamonds are delight- 
ful objects and may be enjoyed if any adequate return in 
pleasure results from the human toil necessary to produce 
them. If a lady intent on giving five thousand girls a vaca- 
tion sells her costly jewels for that purpose, she is not re- 
sponsible for the jeweler's disposition of them. True, 
another woman of fashion may purchase them and continue 
the ostentation and selfish enjoyment that the first woman has 
abandoned ; but if no demand for tiaras exists, their jewels 
will soon be re-set to supply the moderate and more legiti- 
mate demand of the many. If a thousand women have each 
one gem, the moralist will have little to condemn, because the 
return for the expenditure of say one hundred thousand dol- 
lars, all told, means the happiness of a thousand women in- 
stead of one. 

The toil of many for the enjoyment of few is the evil 
of that kind of luxury which must be condemned. What 
justice requires is that many shall consume what many 
produce. 

If it is thought that civilization will then devote itself to 
the production of mere common essentials and that rare and 
exquisite work will not be done, let it be remembered that, 
as has been previously said, many forms of beauty, though 
owned by the few, may be so placed as to be enjoyed by the 
many. Moreover, public buildings, art museums, parks, 
public botanical gardens and conservatories, churches, 
schools and open squares will give ample opportunity for 
the encouragement of every form of art. When we have 
come to look upon beauty as an essential to fine national 
life and not a luxury for the few, the artist will welcome 



LUXURY. 17 

the state as a more worthy and reliable patron than the 
millionaire. 

A COMMON FALLACY. 

Thus far the ethical side of the question has been con- 
sidered. Stress has been laid upon the immense possibil- 
ities of money if diverted from superfluities for the few to the 
production of permanent and genuine values for the many. 

The decorations of a ballroom that cost ten thousand dol- 
lars would probably give guests the same amount of genuine 
pleasure if they cost one-tenth that sum and the remainder 
were spent on sturdy potted plants, not rare exotics, which 
were put into grimy homes to gladden with their gay color ten 
thousand little pairs of eyes. The price of one showy monu- 
ment in a cemetery could place on the walls of a hundred 
schoolrooms copies of works of art that would far better keep 
the dead in constant memory and would give delight to 
thousands of young people on every school-day for a half 
century or more to come. The onyx staircase in a coal 
baron's castle means that the money spent on that cannot be 
used to give some country town a public library and scatter 
its blessings broadcast, each reader getting seed to sow else- 
where and thus multiply enormously the original plant. 

When one considers these and endless other possibilities 
in spending money, the argument for moderate personal ex- 
pense seems convincing to every mind that is not wholly de- 
void of imagination. ''The cruelest man," says Ruskin, 
''could not sit at his feast unless he sat blindfold." 

But there are many who do sit blindfold, who are cruel 
because they have not imagination enough to know how the 
other nine-tenths live. For these a fitting argument must be 
presented. We may not insist that the rich shall endow 
charities or do good in any positive or aggressive way. All 



18 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

that society may demand is tliat no one shall divert labor 
from worthy and productive to unworthy and unproductive 
ends. Society asks that the interests of society as a whole 
shall not suffer. The spendthrift, or the American who 
would live like a prince and help to create an un-American 
system of caste, who sets a false standard of living and in his 
own person consumes the whole daily labor of thousands, 
without its promotion of his efficiency, — this man is an 
enemy to his country. 

The economic argument hinted at in the first of this chap- 
ter and held by many shortsighted, well-meaning persons, 
is that extravagant expenditure gives employment. It 
causes money to circulate rapidly, encourages business and 
is a boon to workingmen. This is a half-truth. That tem- 
porary help may thus be given to one set of persons is true. 
But that it is of harm in the end to the larger community or 
nation is also true and is the more important truth. Robbing 
Peter to pay Paul is no doubt pleasant enough to Paul, but 
it adds nothing to the sum total of the wealth of both. It is 
the sum total of the nation's wealth that society must con- 
sider, and not the temporary gains of the particular caterers, 
dressmakers and florists to whom some great social function 
gives a brief stimulation of business, often at the expense of 
other workers. 

Rapid circulation of money is generally supposed to be an 
unmitigated good ; but mere circulation of money is no sign 
of prosperity. Money circulates rapidly at Monte Carlo, 
but no wealth is produced. After a fire, money circulates 
rapidly out of the pockets of insurance men into the pockets 
of the owners of burned buildings ; but the world is just so 
much the poorer. Money circulates rapidly at a ball-game, 
lottery or prize-fight ; but the nation is not made richer by 
an exchange of pocketbooks. Unless whatever is produced 



LUXURY. 19 

is worth producing, and unless the product is consumed so 
as to bring proportionate returns in satisfaction, it is evident 
that society suffers. No matter how many transactions are ' 
recorded, or how much money changes hands, the nation is 
the poorer unless intrinsic values are produced and reach a 
sufficient number of consumers. 

A thousand men who make whiskey or dynamite bombs, 
or who blast the Palisades, may be as well paid as a thou- 
sand men who manufacture shoes or plows or plant a forest. 
Though the same money circulates in each case, the differ- 
ence in results is the difference between ugliness and poverty 
and beauty and prosperity. Let those two thousand men 
represent the nation of workers, and it will be seen that it is 
possible for one half of the business activity to be totally 
unproductive of real wealth, that is, the real weal of the 
people. 

An editorial in a leading Boston paper in 1897, concerning 
a famous ball given in New York, expresses a common view : 
''They have not done the best they might; on the other 
hand, have they done the worst ? That half-million might 
have been hoarded, in which event it would have benefited 
no one ; or it might have been put into service to produce 
another half-million, adding to the already swollen store, and 
in the process more likely to help the rich than the poor. 
Yet in either of these supposed cases no one or at least com- 
paratively few would have thought of criticising the manipu- 
lators of this wealth. It is probable that the bal masque 
that is to be has distributed the amount among more peo- 
ple who needed it and in a much shorter time than would 
have been the case had the money found its level through 
the ordinary channels of investment. Yet the lavish dis- 
play has been focused so near the vision that it shuts from 
the sight of many the very considerable incidental benefits 



20 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

that are behind. . . . The rich people pay the state 
for the privilege of being rich — or are supposed to. Their 
wealth has been obtained under the laws of the freest and 
most enlightened nation of the earth, and if they do not 
make as wise a use of it at all times as they might, that is 
a mistake which even their critics are liable to make with a 
different kind of gifts." 

The common fallacy that it is better to squander money 
than to hoard it is based on the mistaken idea that money 
ever is "hoarded" except in time of panic. The miser 
who possesses a few thousands may bury his treasure, but the 
millionaire's possessions are chiefly in investments. The 
money that he spends in lavish entertainment is almost in- 
variably withdrawn from some business or is interest from 
such enterprise, which interest would otherwise be further in- 
vested in business that would give employment. In any 
case he is sure to spend money and circulate it. The only 
question is, where shall it circulate and what shall it employ 
labor to make? If his money is invested in mortgages, 
railroad stock, mines, factories, ships, etc., it is certainly 
employing as many men as if it were spent in employing 
labor to produce feasts that rival a Roman emperor's. The 
necessary business of the world requires large capital, and 
there is never enough. Capital is sometimes timid, and 
fears to injure itself by some unwise reduplication of a use- 
less plant, or by being too venturesome in untried regions. 
Such unwise investment perhaps may do as great economic, 
though never as great ethical injury to the community as 
wild extravagance. If unwise investment were the rule and 
not the exception, some extenuation of extravagance as an 
alternative possibly might be made from the economic 
ground. 

For the large capitalist who is looking for new ways for 



LUXURY. 21 

investment of superfluous capital, two good methods are 
open that have as yet been Httle tried. With the rapid ex- 
termination of our great forests, wood is soon to become a 
scarce and valuable product. With proper forest culture 
and judicious felling of mature trees, an investor in 
forest lands is sure, so experts declare, to reap a good har- 
vest and fair interest. He will not drive any one out of 
business nor be guilty of causing over-production. He will, 
indirectly, whether he cares about it or not, benefit his state 
by thus preserving its beauty, its game and, more than all 
else, the regulation of its water supply. 

Another opening for capital is in the housing of the poor. 
New York alone, according to expert testimony, needs fifty 
million dollars simply to make a good beginning in this di- 
rection. Model tenements there bring a return of four or 
five per cent, net, and, like forest culture, are of enormous 
benefit to the community. Such lodging-houses as the 
''Mills Hotel," in New York, are not only a public boon, 
but are a sound business investment. 

In all such investments the community and the investor 
alike profit, and the result is usually of far greater perma- 
nent benefit to the nation than that resulting from the aver- 
age benevolent endowment. Charity, it need not be said, 
except when so given as to help men to help themselves, is 
usually a positive evil. 

The business man who sets the spindles of legitimate in- 
dustry in motion and pays his employees justly, who keeps 
for himself only what promotes his efiiciency and reinvests 
the remainder in industries is a benefactor to society. 

The above-quoted editorial criticises this re-investment of 
interest, saying that this " adds to the already swollen store 
and in the process is more likely to help the rich than the 
poor," How so? The history of one coin fresh from the 



22 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

mint as it passes through thousands of hands and finally, 
worn with abrasion, is returned to its place of origin illus- 
trates the history of all moneys. Suppose it to reach at first 
the hands of a rich club-man. He may spend it at a race- 
course or pay it to his wash-woman for fresh linen ; she may 
spend it at the baker's for bread or at the pawnshop for a 
trinket ; the baker may spend it for flour or for a ticket to a 
prize-fight ; the prize-fighter may spend it on a wager or to 
pay his rent \ the rich landlord may use it to bribe a police- 
man or to repair his tenements, — and so on ad infinitum. 
The rich may spend their money as wisely as the poor and 
the poor spend theirs as foolishly as the rich. If the money 
circulates, it will be chiefly among poor men, as there are 
many more poor than rich. Whether the coin does good or 
evil depends on the judgment and will of its possessors; 
each is responsible only for his own use of it. 

The science of expenditure, of getting real, not nominal, 
values, is far more difficult than the science of production. 
That is the science of making merely what will sell. 

The editorial declares that <'the rich people pay the 
state for the privilege of being rich — or are supposed to." 
Doubtless the rich pay more than the French nobles 
before the Bastile fell. But that they pay an adequate 
return cannot be supposed for a moment by any one who 
knows the present methods of taxation in most states and 
the way in which a large part of the great American fortunes 
have been amassed. One per cent, of American families 
are estimated to possess as much as the other ninety-nine per 
cent. Do this one-hundredth pay for '' the privilege of 
being rich " one-half the taxes direct and indirect? 

It is well that in the production and enjoyment of legiti- 
mate pleasures some persons should be in the vanguard. 
Let there be symphony concerts somewhere, though some 



LUXURY. 23 

people elsewhere starve. We may permit ourselves furniture 
of fine design and workmanship in our public halls, though 
there still be thousands of American citizens who live in 
squalor in one-roomed huts. It is well that some cities 
should have noble monuments, though others are yet unable 
to pave and drain their streets. We must not wait until all 
are made comfortable before we dare permit to some the 
highest standard of beauty and perfection. There will 
doubtless long be a fortunate class whom ability and good 
fortune will make the possessors of rich and exceptional 
blessings. By their efforts to secure these they may prepare 
the way for others to have them and thus raise the standard 
of living. 

But extravagance, that is, expenditure for what is morally 
unwarranted by the circumstances, must be condemned. 
If it be objected that the instantaneous and universal 
abolition of extravagance would throw many out of employ- 
ment, let it be remembered that the same could be said 
of the sudden stopping of vile publications, of the liquor 
traffic, of ignorance, crime and war. This is no argument 
for their continuance. Neither is the cry of " over-produc- 
tion " in certain industries an argument for the diversion of 
capital into other industries, whose products serve to satisfy 
only artificial or base desires. 

New machinery, which is constantly throwing thousands 
out of employment, must be looked upon as an evil rather 
than a good, unless an increasingly high standard of living 
creates new wants which the unemployed can learn to fill. 
New occupations, massaging, manicuring, repairing bicycles, 
telephoning, typewriting, and a thousand others — are illus- 
trations of the endless ways in which men have found 
emplo)a'nent in satisfying new and legitimate wants. Just as 
far as new wants and the satisfaction of them promote 



24: TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

efficiency they should be increased. Perhaps nothing more 
distinguishes man from the brutes than his ever-increasing 
desires. 

But for the permanent prosperity of the nation three things 
are imperative : First, that man's increasing wants shall not 
be fictitious but genuine, and shall tend to a larger and 
fuller life and not to a mere accumulation of things having 
market value : Second, that as Ruskin so constantly urges, 
the life of the producer shall always be considered, as well 
as the quantity and quality of his product ; so far as pos- 
sible his work must be made an element in his gaining not 
merely "a living" but life, not merely bread and boots 
but skill, ingenuity, and perception of nature's laws. Third, 
in the number of consumers and the durability of the prod- 
uct, labor must receive an adequate return. The labor of 
many must be consumed by many, or else proportionately 
increase the efficiency of the few. 

To sum up what has been said : After legitimate de- 
mands are gratified, happiness is not increased proportion- 
ately with increased expenditure; extravagance does not 
depend on the relation of outgo to income and is always to 
be condemned ; luxury is justifiable only when the outlay 
brings adequate returns in happiness to the many or in 
efficiency for the few ; whether money be invested in busi- 
ness or spent in extravagant living, it is bound to circulate 
and to give employment. If we consider the permanent 
good of the many rather than the temporary good of the few, 
we must from both the ethical and economic standpoint 
sharply condemn what it must be sorrowfully admitted the 
majority of our citizens condone or approve. 

"It is a state of mind much to be dreaded for a man not 
to know the devil when he sees him," said Ruskin ; and Lowell 
declared: **If the devil take a less hateful shape to us 



LUXURY, 25 

than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them ; and 
if we cannot find it in our hearts to break with a gentleman 
of so much worldly wisdom, who gives such admirable 
dinners and whose manners are so perfect, so much the 
worse for us." 

Among the many fascinating forms that the Proteus-like 
devil of to-day assumes, perhaps none is more baleful than 
that in which he beguiles one to believe his pleasant 
doctrine, that the self-indulgence of the individual is of 
advantage to the many, and that a man may rightfully do 
with his legal possessions what his pleasure dictates. 

" Now Dives feasted daily and was gorgeously arrayed, 
Not at all because he liked it, but because 'twas good for trade ; 
That the people might have calico he clothed himself in silk 
And surfeited himself on cream that they might have more milk. 
He fed five hundred servants that the poor might not lack bread, 
And had his vessels made of gold that they might have more lead ; 
And e'en to show his sympathy with the deserving poor, 
He did no useful work himself, that they might do the more." 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 

By privileged women is here meant those who are born 
in this land and in this time when woman is honored and 
respected as never before in the history of the human race ; 
of these women, those who can take every week some hours 
for self-culture ; in short, not pampered idlers, but the taste- 
fully dressed, cultivated women of moderate means who 
want to do their best and whose sins are chiefly sins of 
thoughtlessness. 

As one sees these women in their trim gloves and dainty 
bonnets at Browning clubs and afternoon teas, one asks how 
far they comprehend how exceptionally privileged they are. 
Are they often even remotely conscious of the millions of 
haggard, brown-skinned, women on parched, famine-stricken 
plains in India ? of the tens of thousands in Armenia and 
Cuba who have seen sons and husbands die a speedy death 
that they would gladly welcome for themselves? of the 
women who toil in the fields and carry fodder on their 
backs ; or who climb scaffoldings bearing bricks and mortar, 
as do thousands of European peasant women? or of the 
women who hammer at an anvil like the blacksmith 
women in the English "black country"? Do they ever 
imagine themselves in the western ** dugout" or the New 
York sweating-den ? Do they know of the deadly dullness 
of the life of most of even their well-fed and well-clothed 
American sisters, who live on desolate, muddy, prairies 
where not a rock or tree breaks the awful monotony of level 
land and arching sky ? Do they realize the dreary routine 
of existence and the petty gossip in thousands of ugly little 

^6 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN, 27 

villages where not a club, or library, gives color or stimulus 
to the lives of drudging housewives ? Do they know the 
life that is daily lived in great sections of South Boston and 
East Cambridge, of Brooklyn, and Jersey City, and the West 
Side of Chicago, and similar places where life is uneventful, 
unpicturesque, and devoid of all delight ? 

The well-to-do club-woman, who is freed from drudgery 
and has more leisure and opportunity for self-development 
than her husband, belongs probably to the most privileged 
class that the world has ever known. 

More girls than boys are graduated from high schools. 
Boys enter business before they study the humanities or de- 
velop much love of letters. While they study material 
things and market prices, more girls are studying the history 
of man's past, the noblest works of art and literature, some- 
thing of languages, ethics, and civil government. They j;et 
possession of the key that unlocks the treasures of the ac- 
cumulated wisdom of the race. 

They may enlarge their environment, transcend the nar- 
row limitations of their time and place and gain that culture 
which counts nothing human foreign to it. 

While ever fiercer competition is goading men on to fever- 
ish, exhaustive activity in which study is impossible, women 
are gaining increase of leisure. They receive men's lost 
opportunities and to that extent their responsibilities as 
well. \To whom much is given, of her shall much be 
required. 

Man has ever developed on two parallel lines — one the 
mastery of the physical world, the other the mastery of him- 
self and fellows ; on one line, — the arrow, the wheel, gun- 
powder; on the other, — language, religion, money, law. 
Side by side the tvvo lines of progress advanced until the 
third quarter of the last century, when, suddenly, invention 



28 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

began its startling and accelerating work of subordinating 
nature on a grand scale. There the parallel course ceases, 
for invention and material wealth distanced man's power to 
guide and use them. We eat now with forks of silver in- 
stead of steel, and travel on Pullman cars instead of pillions, 
but our corrupt bosses and savage lynchers outnumber in 
proportion their prototypes in Jefferson's day. 

True, as a whole, there is more sympathy and kindliness. 
Democracy and brotherhood are in our creed, but though 
man's face is fixed forward and upward, though he has put 
a girdle round the globe in forty minutes, has he yet bound 
the ape and tiger within him ? The startling developments 
of lawlessness, irreverence, and greed in these closing years 
of the century reveal what a mighty effort must be put 
forth to bring up this belated side of human progress. Woe 
to the people who let their youth study more eagerly the 
formulae of physics and of chemistry than the eternal law 
of justice. \ 

Who is to do this work ? Chiefly those who have time ; 
those whose energies are not mainly given to iron and coal 
and wood, to things that perish with the using ; those who 
are fitted by inclination and opportunity to deal with human 
wills and tastes and affections. Women may not devise 
twenty-story structures or tunnel under East River. But 
they may abolish the brothel and saloon and transform the 
tenement house. They may plan no reform of the tariff or 
currency, but they may create a public sentiment which 
shall largely divert civic expenditure into different channels. 
They may teach the powers that be that it is cheaper to sup- 
ply playgrounds for the surplus energy of little hoodlums 
than to provide more reformatories. They may not invent 
new schemes to irrigate our barren plains, but they may save 
the destruction of our forests, the pollution of our streams 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 29 

and the spread of disease. They may not contrive new- 
kinds of armor-plate but they may mightily promote sane 
methods of settling international disputes and so preclude 
the need of armor-plate. 

Upon the privileged woman rests a heavy responsibility 
to do the special work that the time demands — the work of 
education of public sentiment ; of scientific charity ; of 
civic reform and of social and industrial reorganization. For 
though women invent little machinery, they control the 
markets of the world. They create demand ; they guide 
taste; they set standards. 

A teacher may know little about bi-metallism or interstate- 
commerce, but if she can persuade fifty boys to buy micro- 
scopes instead of cigarettes, or fifty girls to spend their 
money on Perry pictures instead of on gum and comic val- 
entines, she is so far helping on a wise political economy 
and a reorganization of industry. If a new generation de- 
velopes new tastes the business world will be transformed 
from top to bottom. 

What the nature of things demands of privileged women 
to-day is what the world most needs and what they have 
the best opportunity to do. It is the most delicate, and 
difficult, and important task that a live soul was ever set to 
perform. 

'' He is great who can change my mind," said Emerson. 
It is no feat to move a mountain in these days ; Edison has 
taught us to do a little thing like that without an aching 
muscle. But not all the king's horses nor all the king's men 
can force a will to do justice on a Jay Gould or a Richard 
Croker, or can put a love of truthfulness into the editors of 
the Netv York Journal, or a love of useful work into the 
members of the ''smart set." 

The \vork of spiritualizing the nation, of changing its 



30 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

mind, is the special work for its fortunate women, who, pro- 
tected, respected, and independent in the control of part of 
their time, are more than any other citizens to be held account- 
able if that task is left undone. 

To the active, original mind this work has a peculiar 
charm and fascination. Science can definitely calculate 
what steel and coal and water can perform ; but no science 
yet has fathomed the mystery of latent possibilities in a hu- 
man soul. The fallen man whom you stoop down to lift 
may prove a John B. Gough ; the ragged, black boy whom 
you educate, a Booker Washington ; the awkward prairie- 
lad to whom you lend a book and helping hand may be the 
emancipator of a race. 

The incentive for this work must be a deepening sense of 
gratitude and of personal obligation. We hear of ''self- 
made" men; but how much would even Shakespeare or 
Caesar have done on a desert island, without the heritage 
of the past and the cooperation of their race ? Imagine an 
Edison, an Emerson and a Vanderbilt carried from home in 
infancy and reared by an African tribe. Edison would per- 
haps have produced some ingenious boomerang or jackal 
trap, but no electric light. Emerson perhaps would have 
led the fetich worship and chanted beside the camp-fire 
some new and mystic folk-song. Vanderbilt, clad in a 
lion's hide would have contrived to get more gold-dust and 
wives than any of his tribe and would be reverenced as a 
mighty chief. That would have been all ; genius thus cir- 
cumscribed could do no more. 

A completely self-made man is a wild man of the woods 
without language or virtue. It is good for us conceited 
mortals to dwell on this long and often. A profound sense 
of an eternal, unpayable debt to society is the true basis for 
social service or patriotism. 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN, 31 

SOCIAL SERVICE. 

Those who owe society most are generally the first to re- 
pudiate their debt. They have received much, they expect 
much, they demand more as their due. This charge must 
be made against the greatest number of the most privileged 
women in America. 

How is their ingratitude manifested ? chiefly by thought- 
lessness and over self-indulgence. Civic corruption is largely 
due to the decrease of public spirit that has accompanied the 
increase of enormous fortunes and the general worship of the 
bank-book and coupon. Poor, as well as rich, are tainted 
and fall into moral decrepitude by the love of ostentation 
and novelty. It needs no pessimist to tell us, what these 
days reveal with startling clearness, that much which we had 
counted virtue was merely custom and tradition. 

The easy-going life of the unoccupied woman in apart- 
ments and hotels, tends to lower the sense of obligation. 
The woman who does not come into constant, close relations 
with public questions and with the needs of humanity dwarfs 
her power and her personality. She stunts her imagination, 
her ability to put herself in another's place ; she dulls the 
edge of others' courage ; she stands a block in the way of 
progress. What is often condoned in her as negative good- 
ness becomes a positive evil. The work that the nature of 
things designed her to do, remains undone and no one else 
will or can do her work. 

Social service does not necessitate conspicuous public life. 
The greatest reform work to-day is done by women in pub- 
lic schools. But social service demands accurate knowl- 
edge. Guess work and intuition will not suffice, neither will 
mere industry and amiability. The worker must be but- 
tressed by that sturdy sense of obligation which prevents 



32 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

privilege leading to paralysis of powers. The lazy debtor 
who ignores his debt is first cousin to the defaulter. 

There must be special training for this work, clear vision, 
and self-poise which make great activity possible without fuss 
or friction. There must be that honesty with one's self, 
which will give an entirely new meaning to the abused term 
— '' social duties." 

There must be an abandonment of the morning or after- 
noon whist club — a deadly foe to social service, which not 
infrequently becomes a debauch of amusement, to which 
many women are almost as addicted as a toper to his cups. 

One foe to wise social service, is the charity fair which 
serves as a roundabout, clumsy, uneconomic, and often un- 
ethical contrivance for obtaining money. If money were 
the most important aid to charity or reform, and if fairs 
were the only method of gaining it, the attendant evils 
might be excused ; but neither supposition is true. Few 
wives and daughters who receive their income from the man 
of the family can produce spasmodically anything that has 
great market value. 

Their attempts to raise money by selling embroidered 
center-pieces and cake are usually met with a specious suc- 
cess that is more deplorable than failure. They exclaim 
triumphantly that they have "made" five hundred dollars 
at their little two-days sale and flatter themselves that they 
have done God service. A little honest figuring would sur- 
prise them. A group of wealthy young ladies in Boston 
once "made" ^150 at a certain apron sale. On investiga- 
tion it was shown that ^75 had been spent outright for 
material. Their return for labor rendered was twelve-and-a- 
half cents an hour. These girls, who would not hesitate to 
pay fifteen dollars for a hat, or five dollars for a music lesson, 
found, when they worked for charity, that they could earn 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 33 

only the wages of a scrub-woman. A little sacrifice of cara- 
mels and sodas would have supplied the paltry sum that they 
earned and left time free for genuine service at first hand to 
those who need most what money cannot buy and who are 
suffering for what the cultivated, sympathetic women of the 
privileged class can best bestow. 

An illustration of this kind of service taken from life may 
be suggestive. A certain young lady of Boston went every 
Saturday to a poor tenement-house and took home a little 
girl eight or nine years old, whose mother went out daily to 
earn her bread. Th(^>^5riU,^hu hgtfa:^ously been left to 
play on the stre^^^ wiming ^l^if^'sj^ becoming a 
wild little stre^Vaif. fiiP^^^'^^gjend, ^fl\:eaching her 
home, gave tlW child J^(&S/tl2 Si't§§5 ^^"^ 1n Wean under- 
wear, taught hea^t^care for her person and y/o mend her 
clothing. She UM|^J^Uf^ij«ji^&|-^^ If^r^^e kitchen to 
see a dessert pr^p^^^^ fesiTrt' \\<^^ M^-rfs ^r^mWy luncheon, 
where gentle instruction in good table manners accompanied 
the unaccustomed dainties. After the meal, a walk, or story, 
or games, or music, filled a happy afternoon. This weekly 
visit to what seemed to the child a little earthly paradise 
made a profound impression on her life. Better manners, 
better English and a new standard of living were carried 
back to the tenement-house. Sweet Miss Ethel became the 
child's patron saint and the inspirer of laudable ambition. 
It cost a patient, persistent sacrifice of one whole day every 
week, but it meant the lightening of a widow's burden, and 
the saving of a little soul. 

Let the new church windows be paid for chiefly by those 
who earn money regularly and profitably, or let them wait 
for a time. Let the hospital bed wait longer for endowment 
if the money must be gained by labor which otherwise 
directed might prevent the illness and disaster for which 



34 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

that bed is designed. Let costly palliatives be provided by 
those who cannot do the far more important work of pre- 
vention. 

When Lady Bountifuls will pay their milliners and 
dressmakers promptly, and cease shopping after five and on 
Saturday afternoons, and purchase only at the shops upon the 
''white list," there will be fewer girls who need dispensary 
and hospital. 

If one, at odd moments, produces something of genuine 
market value, well and good ; let it be sold at the Woman's 
Exchange, or store, at market price, and the money used in 
charities. 

Teaching little Italians and Poles how to make their own 
flannel petticoats is a better social service than making 
money by tidies or tableaux to buy them clothes. The 
supposition is that sociability is fostered more by fairs than 
by anything else, but cannot social intercourse come by co- 
operation in wise, instead of unwise work ? Is it not better 
to have purchasers free to buy only what they want and at 
the shops, thus encouraging legitimate trade, than to cajole 
them into buying and cluttering their houses with that 
superfluity of nicknacks which makes so many homes seem 
fussy and unrestful ? 

Granted that more money is wheedled out of the com- 
munity by fairs than could be got by any other means, what 
then ? Money is only one of many things that the world 
needs. 

Let no woman flatter herself that she does more good than 
harm, unless like a good player of checkers she can look 
two moves ahead ; unless she abhors stupid circumlocution, 
and self-deception. 

Only a few of the countless, wise methods of social serv- 
ice can be here suggested. Such are collecting and sending 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 35 

magazines, papers and clippings to white and colored teach- 
ers and preachers in poor communities that have no libraries, 
for which addresses can always be obtained through mission- 
ary bureaus, or by writing directly to postmasters, or schools 
like Hampton, or Tuskegee. Every privileged family should 
be in close correspondence with some unprivileged people a 
thousand miles away. There is Associated Charity work 
which always needs more workers and more devotion ; day 
nurseries; home libraries;^ girls' clubs; boys' clubs; 
classes for domestics in a given neighborhood, where current 
events, foreign travel, illustrated with pictures, or other mat- 
ters may be presented by a tactful woman in such wise as to 
break the monotony of housework and give her hearers a 
glimpse of culture that of right belongs to them as well as 
her. There is the work of collecting rents in tenement- 
houses and thus touching in helpful ways many a slatternly 
and discouraged woman ; the nomination and election of 
good school-boards, for which women in many states are as 
responsible as men ; the study of civic needs and conditions 
and infractions of ordinances, and the initiation of bills look- 
ing toward the abolition of eyesores and unsanitary con- 
ditions. Perhaps the best work will be done by careful 
study of some civic disorder like the work of Mrs. Kinnicutt, 
of New York, who made Col. Waring' s world-famous re- 
form in street management a possibility. 

CULTURE. 

Comparatively few privileged women devote as much 
time to social service of any kind, wise or unwise, as to self- 
culture. In the mad effort to obtain that summum bonum, 
the '' cultivated " woman often fails more pitiably than in any 

^Boston has over sixty of these ; its headquarters are with the Child- 
ren's Aid Society. 



36 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

other endeavor of her life. Unless she is a peculiarly well- 
balanced woman, she feels a pressure upon her ''to keep up 
with the times," to have at least a bowing acquaintance with 
all the works of the greatest novelists and poets ; to know 
the greatest dramatic and musical gossip, the society news, 
and an indefinite amount of literature, history, languages, 
politics, and current events. Such a woman, in her reading 
and study, works often with breathless zeal but little discre- 
tion, and takes up whatever subjects acquaintances or whim 
suggest, or a club dictates. She has no true principle of 
selection. In her desire to gratify a mental curiosity, she 
tastes of endless dishes, good, bad and indifferent, but sups 
on none, and thus induces mental dyspepsia. 

It is only the exceptional woman who takes the matter of 
self-culture quite seriously — that is, with a definite idea of 
what she most needs and how to attain it. Conscientious 
mothers, who, for the sake of their families want to make 
the most of themselves, no less than the frivolous society 
woman who joins a class because it is the fashion to study 
something, are here led wildly astray. 

When untrained in discrimination as to the relative value 
of subjects, they often make woful mistakes as to the im- 
portance of one epoch of history or one department of 
thought over another. A belief that a conversational knowl- 
edge of French and German is a necessary element of cul- 
ture is one of the most pernicious fallacies held by the type 
of American woman who has no command of her own lan- 
guage and little knowledge of the best English literature. 
Many are the women who assiduously read French or Span- 
ish history before they know the first principles of their own. 
They can give the pedigrees of worthless Louises and Rod- 
erigos when they have no idea of what the names, " Sir 
Harry Vane," <*Pitt/' "Hamilton," or ''Jefferson" stand 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 37 

for in the progress of political thought. Such women will 
study Scandanavian mythology or Shintoism, when they know 
almost nothing of the history of their own religion, and 
could not tell Ezra from Athanasius, or guess within five 
hundred years of the date of King David. 

They will take lessons for years to enable them to chatter 
French and German as fluently as a portier at a continental 
hotel, and yet be as ignorant as he of the art, philosophy, 
politics, science, or historical significance of the nations 
whose idioms and accents they have mastered with such 
pains. Caring more for the form of thought than for 
thought itself, they would apparently rather have one idea 
that they could express in three languages than have three 
ideas and express them in but one tongue. 

They may study china painting and devote to a fragile 
dinner-set as much time as would have made them familiar 
with the best thought of Ruskin and Liibke, and have in- 
finitely enlarged their enjoyment and comprehension, not 
alone of painting, but of sculpture, architecture, and nature 
as well. 

When a perception of relative values has been gained, 
and it is seen that mental food must not be taken unless it 
nourishes the mind or soul, then class and lecture, magazine 
and book will play a different part in culture. The cause of 
a conflict will receive more study than the details of a cam- 
paign. The great strike and little civic war ensuing in Penn- 
sylvania will demand more attention than the details of even 
the Dreyfus case. About the principles involved in one, we 
have some measure of responsibility to form public opinion, 
and form it justly ; the other is a thrilling tale, unparalleled 
in fiction, but for which we have no jot or tittle of responsi- 
bility. The main facts about it are all that most busy peo- 
ple can afford to study. 



38 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN, 

When the mind becomes really cultivated it will put away, 
not only childish things, but things which, as Barrie's Senti- 
mental Tommy said, ** with which we have no concern." 

What once seemed delightful and interesting, as did 
blocks and paper-dolls in babyhood, will be replaced in in- 
terest by what at present seems dull or incomprehensible. 

" Heartily know, when half-gods go 
The gods arrive." 

In the selection of subjects for regular study, the earnest 
woman will always bear in mind the truth that Ruskin 
teaches : *' Life is short and the quiet hours of it few," and 
that these hours are precious and must be used to best ad- 
vantage j that, as Lowell says : " Desultory reading hebe- 
tates the will and cuts the bowstring of action." Desul- 
tory reading is not necessarily hasty and partial reading ; it 
is aimless reading. The man of science who has command 
of his subject may hastily and partially read a new book 
without his reading being desultory. His quick, keen eye 
discerns the salient points, and he wastes no time in per- 
functorily reading through what is irrelevant to his purpose. 
'' The good reader, like the inventor, must be a good 
selector." Out of the infinity of material offered him he 
must take only what he can use and sternly reject all else. 
He must be ashamed of frittering away his time on too 
many unrelated things. He must be perfectly ready to pro- 
fess an unashamed ignorance of most subjects that do not in 
some way touch his responsibilities. Reading for mere rec- 
reation may follow the moment's whim, but reading for en- 
largement of power must have, not only persistence and 
thoroughness, but a noble and definite aim. Each reader 
must study her own needs. If her husband is an artist, a 
knowledge of the history of art may be far better for her 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 39 

than a study of Darwin or Maeterlinck ; if he be a dyspeptic, 
a course in domestic science may be worth more than even 
the history of art. 

Whatever else they study, the social and industrial prob- 
lems of our own day should be a constant and most im- 
portant part of the culture of all privileged women. The 
woman of leisure who confounds socialism with anarchism 
or communism; who does not know what ''black-listing" 
or the "truck system" or ''sweating" mean; who has no 
more idea than a child what the wealth of the country is or 
how it is distributed ; or how her town is governed ; who 
does not know by personal inspection the immigrant quarter 
of her own town ; or know where to direct a beggar to go, 
is a woman who has a weak sense of responsibility unless she 
use some of her leisure to inform herself.^ 

These subjects are not as entertaining as the history of 
Verdi's operas, or lives of ladies of the French Salons, but 
as they have a vital relation to one's responsibilities, igno- 
rance of them becomes a reproach. 

A sound knowledge of history is needed to give standards 
of comparison. This sound knowledge must be based on 
philosophic insight and not on endless, unsifted facts. It 
must be made to throw light on the problems of to-day. 

" The perception of identity," says Emerson, " is the guage 
of intellectual attainment." That is a very profound in- 
sight. It was the perception of the identity of forces of 
nature that developed the theist from the polytheist. It is 

1 The following books are suggested for a beginning of this study : 
Social Ideals In English Letters, Vida D. Scuddar; Culture and 
Anarchy, Matthew Arnold ; Crown of Wild Olives, Unto This Last, 
Ruskin ; Hopes and Fears for Art, Wm. Norris ; American Political 
Ideas, John Fiske; Socialism and Social Reform, Richard T. Ely; 
History of Socialism, T. Kirkup; Evolution of Modern Capitalism, 
J. A. Hobspn, 



40 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

the perception of identity that has given us much of the 
science we have to-day, including the doctrines of evolution 
and the correlation of forces. It is that perception that 
made Garrison and Phillips see under the skin of the black 
man a soul identical with their own — a child of God. 

The woman who applies this principle to daily life will see 
that, in scope, civic administration on a large scale, and her 
housekeeping on a small scale, are identical. She will see 
that the tyranny of a King George, or of an unscrupulous 
"boss" in a so-called 'democracy," are identical. She 
will see that certain transactions in stocks are the same as 
robbery; that persuading her husband to take her to the 
horse-show on the night of his caucus, and cajoling him into 
sacrificing a debt of honor for her amusement, are in princi- 
ple the same. 

In studying literature or history, every man should be 
studied in relation to his contemporaries ; every fact, in its 
relation to other facts. Every isolated fact should be seen 
to be worthless until it is related to others and illustrates 
a principle. 

Let the seeker for culture learn to utilize her wealth of 
material; to see that the poet, or man of insight, " finds no 
subject that does not belong to him — politics, stock-broker- 
age, manufacturers and political economy just as much as 
sunsets and souls " ; that what we need is '^to convert the 
vivid energies acting at this hour in New York, and Chicago 
and San Francisco into universal symbols," making this 
" contemporary insight transubstantiation, a conversion of 
daily bread into the holiest symbols." 

HOW TO DO IT. 

The work of the privileged woman to-day is thus seen to 
be largely a guidance of public sentiment on social questions. 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 41 

It is the setting up of new standards and ideals and a dili- 
gent, persistent holding them up against all opposition. It 
requires that kind of moral courage in which women as a 
rule are inferior to men. 

The first step in learning '* how to do it " is, as has been 
shown, the being born again, the coming to a new sense of 
obligation and responsibility. The second step is in the 
systematizing of time and energy. This means the making 
of home-life simpler, study more definite, the club-life in its 
different branches more coordinated, and less aimless, super- 
ficial and miscellaneous than it often is. 

While many clubs are doing a noble work, it must be 
confessed that the majority are not yet past the early stage 
when the most that can be said of them is that they bring 
Baptists and Unitarians into friendly relations, substitute for 
gossip an hour's harmless entertainment by a lecture on 
birds, or Japanese art or Persian poetry, and teach a few 
women not to be afraid of the sound of their own voices. 

But to-day the world is asking more of club-women than 
that they write a paper once a winter on orchids, or nihilism, 
or the chafing-dish and listen to twenty other papers on as 
many unrelated subjects. 

Except for rare souls dowered with genius, the nineteenth 
century method for large and valuable_ac£Dmplishment is 
organization. It is for the privileged woman to so guide 
home-life, and club work, and church work, that their varied 
interests may all be organized and harnessed together and 
like good steeds pull toward one goal, instead of, as too fre- 
quently, like an unruly train of Esquimaux dogs with a poor 
driver, pull in twenty ways at once. Concentration, per- 
sistence, calm indifference to the latest novelties that distract 
attention, and a burning desire to bring all forces to bear to 
make the home, the club, and the class a distinct power in 



42 TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

the community for its upbuilding — these are the things to 
aim at. 

To do this the woman must acquire the power to think 
logically and to speak English effectively. She must be able 
to speak so as to be heard and if necessary take lessons in order 
to accomplish this. She must rid herself of tricks of speech : 
over emphasis on every word, which of course, leaves nothing 
emphasized ; the use of long, roundabout, parenthetical 
clauses that obscure the meaning ; the incoherent, half-con- 
struction of sentences without any clear thought ; the limited 
vocabulary that makes a half-dozen overworked adjectives 
and adverbs do duty for everything in heaven and earth ; 
she must especially avoid the insertion of irrelevant matter, 
and indulgence in anti-climaxes. 

The time and money spent in mastering an accomplish- 
ment for occasional use, like a foreign language or a musical 
instrument, would more than suffice to make the most timid 
and least-gifted bungler in speech into an agreeable speaker, 
at all times able to say what she wanted to say in effective 
fashion. Practice would enable her to use this power in a 
larger circle than that around the tea-table. That so neces- 
sary an acquirement as clear, ready speech should be so rare 
amongst great readers evinces a need for greater activity and 
less passivity in the intellectual life. If, instead of listening 
to endless papers, the club-woman of to-day were to join a 
well-managed class in debate in which live questions were 
discussed under a competent instructor, she, perhaps, would 
do the most important thing that she could do for her own 
culture and usefulness. 

The woman who, after she demonstrates her last problem 
at school and writes her graduating essay, is not called 
upon for ten years to put any thought into definite shape, 
finds with astonishment that her power of thought is as weak 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 43 

and beyond her control as her fingers are if she has not 
touched a piano during the interval. Let her practice daily 
the careful analysis of some good thing that she has read or 
heard. Let her pass on to some interested person whatever 
she has gained and she will develop more by only fifteen 
minutes work a day than do all the blue-stockings of her ac- 
quaintance who have lectures galore and write papers 
cribbed from encyclopedias. Without self-activity in giving 
forth, mind and soul become atrophied. 

Why do so many women decline to give a report of a lec- 
ture or sermon with the words : '* Oh, don't ask me ; I liked 
it, but I can never tell anything ' ' ? The feminine mind ex- 
presses itself very volubly upon occasion. When the discussion 
is upon matters where a disorderly, whimsical, temperamental 
treatment is permissible there is not only great rapidity, but 
great vehemence and often brilliancy of expression. Here 
there is no sense of responsibility, no need of weighing words, 
or of doing logical thinking. 

But when a matter of genuine importance is raised, there 
is often a leaping to generalizations from inadequate data, a 
running off at a tangent, and a general vagueness of thought 
that is humiliating. This is rarely due to lack of ability, 
but to lack of training caused by a weakening sense of irre- 
sponsibility. 

More and more, men are coming to see that the removal 
of responsibility from women is the cruelest form of kind- 
ness. There are many who still smile at their wives dawn- 
ing interest in public affairs, who do not care to discuss 
trades-unions or civil service reform at home, and by their 
silence or banter discourage frank discussion ; but the man 
who respects womanhood and sees her needs is not far to 
seek. He rejoices in the woman who can think independ- 
ently and sweetly, bravely, clearly state her conviction. 



44: TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN. 

The average matron, if she has not such a husband, feels, 
when she is once awakened to a sense of civic duty, that 
the burden is greater than she can bear. She is bewildered 
by the growing complexity and immensity of the social and 
industrial problems ; her half-forgotten school education, her 
miscellaneous reading, and vague, irresponsible thinking 
have unfitted her to deal with them. She, too often, falls 
back half-sorrowfuUy upon fairs and almsgivings as a sop to 
her conscience. 

Such is frequently the history of strong, capable minds 
whose possibilities for helpfulness in unravelling the tangled 
skein of social problems were immeasurable. Their gener- 
ous impulses have been stunted, their minds have run to 
waste; their life, though filled with club and church and 
committee meetings, is largely aimless and ineffective. 

The few who have a keen sense of responsibility and wis- 
dom in making their work effective, are overburdened with 
their own and others' work. It is difficult for such to live 
an all-round and well-balanced life. The intensity of the 
woman, who knows her obligations to society, is in danger of 
making her present reform as an unlovely thing and the re- 
former as a bore. 

Let these faithful workers who are trying to do not only 
their own share of service, but that of all the drones and 
shirks as well, remember that serenity and sweetness as well 
as strenuousness are powerful weapons ; that a tactful pres- 
entation at a dinner table of reasons for a Consumers* 
League ; or an inspiring story of civic heroism to rampant 
jingoes in a nursery ; or a friendly talk in the kitchen about 
the Tammany tiger, may be as effectual as lobbying or lec- 
turing. The place where missionary work is oftenest needed 
is in drawing-rooms, where members of the " perishing upper 
classes " need to be made to see that to "go shares with the 



THE PRIVILEGED WOMAN. 45 

unlucky " sometimes gives a keener zest to life than kennel- 
clubs and millinery openings. 

Let the reformer recollect that there are souls to save not 
only in tenements but in brown-stone mansions. That 
many a warm heart under a chiffon waist longs for an oppor- 
tunity to love and work, and welcomes as a thirsty flower 
welcomes rain, the inspiration to a larger life. The earnest 
woman is too often tempted to despise those, whom she 
should but pity, because they live in gilded cages, when, if 
they only knew the joy of freedom, they too might soar and 
sing. She must illumine her reform work and make it seem 
not a mere matter of dull duty and dry statistics — not the 
special work of some peculiar people labelled ''reformers," 
but simply the natural daily work of every child of God ; 
who, by his birthright, has the privilege to guide the wander- 
ing, to strengthen the weak, to cleanse the foul, to set the 
crooked straight, and to make in the deserts a highway for 
our God. 

The frightful waste of latent ability, of study misguided, 
of opportunities that can never return are often, though un- 
noticed and unmourned, far more tragic than swift calamities 
that shock a nation, like the dramatic sinking of the Maine. 
All men must sometime die ; the shortening of one's years 
on this little planet is not the most tragic thing that we 
must face. 

But that the highest opportunities for service, which means 
larger life, should carelessly be thrown away; that life 
should be cramped when it might be broad, or feverish 
when it might be calm, or selfish when it might be noble ; 
that the unprivileged should cry in vain for help to those 
who might help — that, indeed, is tragedy. 



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